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Tahir MehmoodMedical staff at a Manchester Airport
holding centre did not see paperwork warning them that a newly arrived detainee
had complained to immigration officers about chest pains, an inquest heard
yesterday.

Tahir Mehmood, a 43-year-old chef from
Pakistan who had overstayed his visa, was detained at the Pennine House
short-term holding facility at Manchester Airport on 20 July 2013. Six days
later he died in custody. The Home Office has twice refused Mehmood’s widow a
visa to attend the inquest at Manchester town hall, local human rights
organisation RAPAR told Corporate
Watch.

Pennine House, located inside Terminal 2,
can hold 32 men and women for up to seven days pending their removal from the
UK. Detainees can step outside into a “fresh air cage”. It is managed for the
Home Office by a private security company, Tascor Services Ltd, and healthcare
is delivered by Tascor Medical Services Ltd. Both are part of the Capita group
of companies, although they are represented by different legal teams at the
inquest. Nine staff members from Tascor Services gave differing testimonies at
the inquest yesterday about Mehmood’s time in their custody.

Tahir Mehmood was arrested by immigration
officers on 20 July 2013 and taken to Dallas Court reporting centre, a Home
Office facility in Manchester where Tascor Services operate holding cells. He
was noticed there by Mr Saddique, a Tascor detention custody officer (DCO), who
speaks Urdu. Saddique told the inquest that the immigration officer who booked
Mehmood into Dallas House heard the translator say he occasionally got “pains
in his chest” and he was taking vitamin D tablets prescribed by the doctor. No
medication was found, but this comment was recorded on a piece of paperwork
known as an IS 91 R.

Saddique then made his own way to Pennine
House. On arrival there he saw Mehmood being booked in at the reception desk.
Saddique said he offered to help process Tahir Mehmood into Pennine House, but
his colleagues there insisted they could manage despite Mehmood’s low level of
English.

Saddique said he did not help with
booking-in “a great deal”. By contrast, DCO Michael Holmes, who was working in
reception when Mehmood arrived, told the inquest Saddiquewas there for
“80 per cent of booking-in process”.

Roy Pritchard, a third Tascor DCO, told
the inquest that Tahir Mehmood arrived at Pennine House around 3.30pm.
Pritchard checked Mehmood's documents and found the IS 91 R. Pritchard says he
asked Saddique about the chest pains but was told it had been sorted out at
Dallas Court. However, the paperwork was not shown to the Tascor Medical
Services nurse who at that moment was examining Mehmood in an adjacent room.

Six days later

The inquest heard differing accounts
about Mehmood’s treatment on 26 July 2013, the day he died, particularly
concerning the time it took for medical assistance to arrive, resuscitation
techniques and defibrillators.

DCO Peter Bloor said that afternoon a
detainee called ‘Abdul’ approached him with Mehmood and put his hands to his
chest, saying Mehmood needed a nurse. Bloor called over the radio, but the
nurse said she was busy and would come later. After around half an hour, the
pair came back to Bloor and repeated their request for medical attention.
Bloor’s witness statement recorded this second request as having taken place at
roughly 2.30pm. The nurse told him to bring them downstairs to the healthcare
room.

DCO Barry Clare was in the reception
area, next to healthcare, and saw Mehmood go in to see the nurse. Clare said:
“The nurse was with Mr Mehmood for quite a long time. Other detainees arrived
to see the nurse. We put them in the visits room to wait. I went to tell the
nurse. Mr Mehmood was lying on the bed. The nurse said his blood pressure was
fine. He was facing the wall.” The Coroner, Nigel Meadows, commented that this
was “a very busy nurse”.

DCO Bloor was called back to collect
Mehmood. The nurse said his blood pressure had stabilised. He had laid down for
15 to 20 minutes. She told him to go back upstairs and to lie down. Bloor said
Mehmood nodded, and then he took him upstairs to the cells. When he reached the
landing, Bloor told him to have a lie down, and Mehmood went to the toilet.

A short while later, an emergency call
went out over the radios. Bloor rushed to room two, Mehmood’s cell: “He looked
terrible. He was sweating profusely.”Tascor’s duty operations manager,
Paul Crellin, also rushed to the scene. His job involves the “care and welfare
of all detainees in the centre”, and the Coroner commented that “you are the
boss”. Crellin saw Mehmood sitting on the bed with his back to the wall. “I
touched his forehead. It was extremely hot and covered in beads of sweat. I was
not sure if he was dead.”

Crellin told the coroner he had received
basic CPR training from a three day general first aid course. “I looked for a
pulse on the right hand side of his neck but there was nothing there that I
could feel. I radioed saying it was a medical emergency. The nurse was already
coming. We put him in the recovery position.” Then they put him on his back on
the bed and began CPR, with Crellin doing the chest compressions.

Crellin said, “The course did not tell me
what to do if someone is not breathing — I learnt ABC [Airway, Breathing,
Circulation] but did not check his breath.”

Differing accounts of defibrillation and delay

Crellin said a defibrillator was not
called for by the nurse and that it was only mentioned later, after external
paramedics had arrived. “I went to get it when paramedics told me … I think it
was after the second set of paramedics came”, he said.

The lawyer for the Mehmood family asked,
“It was known that a defibrillator increased the chance of survival?” Crellin
agreed that it was, but said it was not part of medical emergency radio code. It
has since been incorporated, he added.

Ms Straw, the lawyer for Tascor Medical
services, suggested that in fact another staff member had already got the
defibrillator. Crellin acknowledged that whilst doing the chest compressions “I
certainly would have had tunnel vision.”

DCO Linda Evans said she was with Paul
Crellin when the emergency call was made and followed him to that fateful cell
number two. She says the nurse asked her
to get the defibrillator and she ran for it. It was there before the first
ambulance crew arrived. When she came back Crellin was doing CPR. DCO Bloor,
who helped the paramedics bring their bags upstairs, also said he saw Crellin
doing CPR when he came back to the room. However, Steven O’Reilly, a paramedic
has previously told the inquest that “When we went in nobody was doing CPR and
we started CPR straight away,” according to the Manchester Evening News.

Yesterday's final witness, DCO Kevin Harvey, said
he had discovered Mehmood in his cell earlier that afternoon when a detainee
who could speak little English gestured to follow him into cell two, where
Harvey saw Mehmood sat up against the wall with a fixed stare. Harvey made the
‘medical emergency’ call over the radio.

He said: “I saw the manager come out.
Then the nurse. The nurse checked his pulse and breathing. She tried to take
his blood pressure on his arm. We moved him over into the recovery position and
positioned his neck so his airway was clear. Then we put him on his back. Then
defibrillator was there before the paramedics arrived. The paramedics came in
and placed him on the floor and used their own defibrillator and put a drip in
his arm. Then a second crew arrived. They injected him with adrenaline several
times.”

The Coroner queried why Mehmood was not
already on the cell floor, given that CPR should be done on a hard surface
rather than a mattress. Harvey acknowledged that the floor would have been
better.

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